


Where The Sidewalk Ends

by cadaeic



Category: The Yogscast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 07:59:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2101761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadaeic/pseuds/cadaeic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is WILLIAM STRIFE, and your lifeline has just run out.</p><p>Yogstuck, with apologies to Shel Silverstein, Andrew Hussie and William Strife. Maybe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where The Sidewalk Ends

 

Your name is WILLIAM STRIFE and your lifeline has just run out.

* * *

there is a place where your life ends  
and before sburb begins  
and there the stairs grow thick and white  
and there skaia glows with azure bright  
and there the sprite rises in dualistic flight  
to rest in towers twinned

* * *

You’ve always been a perfectionist.

If it was worth doing, it was worth finding out every single piece of information that could possibly be gleaned from it, and doing it so well that you could make explanatory video guides on it. If you couldn’t find out what you needed, you simply experimented until you did know.

You enjoyed the challenge of learning and the following challenge of applying that knowledge. There was an element of fantasy in there - perhaps you could help other people with it!

Perhaps you could solve other people’s problems. People you admired, like Xephos and all the others.

You couldn’t do that if you didn’t know what you were doing.

A game had come to your attention. A strange game with the oddest reviews and walkthroughs that just ended in the middle of abject confusion. You were, admittedly, interested in what the game billed itself to be.

Oddly enough, there was very little information on what the game actually was about. The only source appeared to be a single GameFAQs walkthrough, differing from the others in its’ length. The prose was overly purple and this tentacleTherapist did have a low opinion on whoever chose to read their work, but you shrugged and bookmarked it.

And then, the game had started with a rather literal bang.

Speed reading became paramount as you sped through the walkthrough, internalising each bit of information no matter how encroached in layers of metaphor it was. This was no longer entertaining or exciting.

With Parv’s lackadaisical natterings on one screen and the walkthrough of life and death on the other, you typed furiously to your server player, micromanaging their every move and almost growling in frustration when they messed up.

When you woke up in a land out of the nastiest nuclear nightmares, you wondered if you were dreaming or dead. Around you were structures, rusted and rotting, a crude mockery of the ones from home.

The small lizards around you told you what this place was. They said they were waiting for He Who Would Fix This Fucking Piece Of Shit Up, which didn’t seem that mythologically sound. You weren’t an expert on such things, though.

Your first piece of priority was to find your cellphone and to check on what the hell the walkthrough had to say. Your cellphone had been taken hostage by a green lizard dressed in your bedsheets, but you managed to negotiate your way through it well enough.

You navigated the links with frantic haste, never stopping to wonder how you got internet on this strange, forsaken land.

==================================================================================  
[ZZZZ] Rose: Egress.  
================================================================================== 

This is my final entry.

… What?

You read on.

I am not playing by the rules anymore. I will fly around this candy-coated rock and comb the white sand until I find answers. No one can tell me our fate can't be repaired. We've come too far. I jumped out of the way of a burning fucking tree, for God's sake.

…

Gods? Furthest Ring?

In case it wasn't clear, magic is real.

Pardon my egress. You're on your own now.

...

* * *

let us leave this place where the smoke blows black  
where the meteor has twisted and bended  
past the ruins where the bodies flow  
we shall walk to the gate measured and slow  
and watch where the chalk white stairs go  
to the place where your life has ended

* * *

 

You dragged yourself back to the Solution Towers, dark determination set in your heavy heart. The Towers had been slightly damaged, and it did look quite unsightly with the pale white additions your server player had made, but you did not fucking care.

The technology was still intact.

You knew technology. You knew your way around computers and code. You weren’t apeshit bananas at the stuff, but you were pretty damn good at it.

Parv had tried to pester you as you worked, and so had the other people, but once again:

you did not care.

The source of the walkthrough was not good old GameFAQs as you had thought. The source addresses disintegrated into gibberish, the numbers becoming letters becoming taunting symbols before disappearing all together.

You were so close.

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pEsteRING solvingSynergist [SS] --

TT: What do you think you’re doing?  
TT: I would very much like to suggest you stop that, although it is quite possible that you will keep blundering into things like a moth to a flame.  
TT: The moth gets burned, by the way. In case that wasn’t painfully obvious.

SS: Who are you?!  
TT: If your next question is how did I get your pesterchum handle, please, spare us the embarrassment and don’t.  
TT: As for that one.  
TT: Rose Lalonde, at your service.  
SS: Wait, you’re the person who wrote the walkthrough.

TT: Not quite.  
TT: I am Rose, but I am not Rose.  
TT: Luxuriating in Paradox Space is quite the fulfilling pastime. The horrorterrors are quite welcoming guests, if only to those utterly doomed by the circumstances of their own timeline.  
TT: The true Rose Lalonde is elsewhere.  
TT: I am a mere meatpuppet, dancing along on suspiciously tentacle-esque strings to tunes of eldritch shrieking.

SS: ...  
SS: Why are you talking to me.  
TT: Why, doesn’t the great and almighty self proclaimed CEO of Strife Solutions know?  
TT: Such a lofty cause, William Strife. I tsk at the sheer arrogance.  
TT: Usually, those who I act as the ambassador for aren’t quite interested in those who hail from the golden moon of dreaming.  
TT: But to use crude parlance, you’re fucking with our property.  
TT: And the Eldest Gods of the Furthest Ring would like to ask you to stop.

SS: I suppose asking you how you know who I am won’t get me anywhere.  
SS: I’m just trying to find out more information about this game!  
TT: And what is laid before you is not enough?

TT: Perhaps we should award you for your ingenuity.  
TT: The great, slimy suckers of the unpronounceable gods have informed me that I should stop making such thinly veiled threats and instead bribe you.  
TT: Their ways are so inscrutable, but as a dead, rotting corpse of a doomed timeline survivor, I shall not question their ways.

SS: And what kind of bribe is that.

TT: A simple captchalogue code.   
TT: ?!wl?!w?   
SS: What does that create?

TT: A change of perspective, they say.  
TT: But don’t use it just yet.  
TT: In fact, I would go as far to say that you should only create it when you are in the most utter of…  
TT: strife.

SS: ...

TT: But if you insist on continuing on your doomed path, know that the gods are quite aware of those who dwell on the purple moon.  
TT: One Alex Parvis sleeps there, even now.  
TT: Wouldn’t it be a shame if anything were to happen to him?

SS: What the hell are you suggesting?!

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] stopped pesteRING solvingSynergist [SS] --

And then your computer exploded. At least, your cellphone had a copy of this troubling transcript.

With the Holopad, you materialised the code that tentacleTherapist had sent you. It revealed a large blue and red lollipop for an absolutely ludicrous amount of grist. You doubted that you would ever need that thing.

That threat towards Parvis, though.

Perhaps you shouldn’t pry into this any further.

Perhaps.

* * *

yes we shall walk to the gate measured and slow  
and watch where the chalk white stairs go  
for the players they mark and the players they know  
the place where sburb begins

* * *

[ > Reader: Glance Into The Future](http://thechaoticguitarist.tumblr.com/post/93234331786/will-hey-alllllllex-parv-do-egilgisgim-kel)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my Yogstuck Strife RP blog.
> 
> Inspired by what Yogstuck Parv Mod made, which is linked above and is awesome. :D
> 
> The original poem is Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein.


End file.
